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The Littlest Pet Shop – a calculatedly endearing line of miniature plastic chibi animals with matching plastic environments – has gripped my daughter in the clutches of obsession.

During our entire month in London this summer, nurse she badgered us any time we came near a store to let her go in and look for these creatures so she could buy them “with my own money!”

My wife spent literally trawling eBay for animals my daughter had not yet collected – mice, doctor lizards, cats, and so on – for her birthday. And when the child’s party came around, we found Littlest Pet Shop animals to give as party favors after ashe and her friends spent the entire birthday sleepover fiddling with, manipulating, enacting conversations with and cooing over their own Littlest Pet Shop animals.

And like a good dad, I indulged her. She seemed so happy.

Now, thanks to a loan from an older girlfriend, she’s moved on with whiplash abruptness to obsess instead over American Girl.

I am such a sap.

But if I buy a single cardigan, maryjane, or pinafore, for the love of Christ – please – collar me, strip me naked, paint me with habanero chili and stake me to the giant ant mound in the town square, because at that point I’ll be too pathetic to deserve better.